


Little Lion Men

by Shayvaalski



Series: Outsong [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Implied Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 17:10:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian and John run into each other, six months after Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Lion Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vocal_bard (atrickstertype)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atrickstertype/gifts).



**Little Lion Men**

**  
**

_but it was not your fault, but mine  
_ _and it was your heart on the line_

**  
**

Out of the corner of his eye, John sees a man throw a punch that looks like music.

He’d just wanted a quiet pint, really. And for the space of ten deliciously lonesome minutes before the chaos had erupted, John had thought he just might manage it--no one sat at his table, no one tried to chat him up. He doesn't have many little pockets of peace these days, moments where he belongs to no one but himself, and he no longer takes them for granted, no longer wastes them thinking of what might have been.

The blow lands. There's a crash, and a laugh, and the man is tall and blond and moves with the kind of brutal violence John has not since seen since Afghanistan and in another heartbeat there is going to be blood. He doesn't even hear his pint hit the floor because by the time it shatters and the beer goes everywhere, John is grabbing the man by the collar and wrestling him down into a headlock and saying,  _Terribly sorry, my brother, he gets like this when he drinks,_ the same thing he has been doing for Harry since she first got into a brawl the night she turned eighteen.

Beneath his arm the man twists and drives an elbow into John's gut, but John is a soldier and an older sibling and Sherlock's best friend, and he's had far worse. The other man is military too, unmistakably, dog tags knocking against his chest, and if he hadn't had enough whiskey that John can smell it on him, this would have been a much worse fight. "Don't be an idiot," John hisses under his breath, close to the man's ear, and then to the proprietor,  _I'll just get him outside, shall I?_  and then he has somehow dragged both of them outside into the London night.

He lets go. The man shakes himself, like a great cat shedding water, and snarls, "The fuck you think you are?" His voice is almost American, equal parts cultured and thug. John raises both his hands, placating.

"Easy, mate. Just wanted a quiet night and this seemed to be the best way to get it." 

The man doesn't seem angry, exactly, which is good, because now that he's on his guard John doesn't think there's a chance in hell of taking him. He's at least a head taller and three inches broader across the shoulders, for one, and for two, there is a rage driving his movements that promises to be impossible to stop. 

His eyes are grayish-green, like a wet stone, and they do not leave John's face. 

"Alright then," the man says, and spits. "All-fucking-right." He turns his back and slouches off. When he's about fifty feet away he turns, squints back at John like he's looking down the barrel of a gun. A few seconds later he's down a side street and out of sight; John lets out a breath. He wants to go home, sit in his chair and tell Sherlock about how he's a bad influence, how John didn't do stupid things before they met, and just thinking about it makes him turn and walk back into the pub.

Three and a half weeks later, and it's not that he's in the habit of getting drunk every night, it's just that he's finally made it six months, finally gotten through what John thinks, without much hope, must be the hardest part. He doesn't remember his mother's death--Harry does, somehow, even though she's younger, but it's a blank for him--so maybe it's normal to wake up every morning angry at someone for leaving you, to spend the day with things to say to them fading in your mouth, to go to sleep at night wondering if maybe, tomorrow, they won't be dead.

A glass clicks down on his table.

"I was five goddamn streets away before I realized where I'd seen the back of your head before." John looks up, meets wet-rock eyes. "John fucking Watson. Mate, I wish to hell and back I'd shot you then and there."

"Sorry, do I know you?" Afghanistan, maybe, but he'd known everyone they worked with pretty well by the time he went home, and he had a feeling it was not going to be that simple. 

"If you do, I fucked up." The man sits down, takes a long drink. "Colonel Sebastian Moran. At your service."

_Second most dangerous man in London_ , says Mycroft, silently,  _and he's just vanished. Do keep your wits about you, John._

John blinks. Moriarty's sniper, his strong right arm. Hell. "What do you want?"

"Oh  _good_ ," Sebastian says, and his smile is slow and mean and savage. "You've heard of me."

They get very drunk. Shockingly drunk, really, the kind of drunk his sister got every time Clara dumped her, a kind of drunk he has never been, not even after he came back for the first time to a flat empty of everything that made it home. Sebastian remains  _alarmingly_ coherent, and John knows that he's been doing this for a long time, six months maybe, and so it's not a surprise, not really, when, apropos of nothing, the other man says with an anguish so sharp it's almost physical, "I can't fucking _cope_ without that fucking bastard."

And John understands. The look on Sebastian's face is the one he feels on his own, sometimes, when he thinks no else can see, and he reaches out, clasps the other man's arm.

"I'm not--" says Seb.

"I know," says John. "Shut up."

 

When the pub finally kicks them out, so late that it's early, John asks, "Coffee?" and Sebastian laughs, short and hard, and shoves his hair out of his face. But he doesn't say no, and in fifteen minutes they're somehow sneaking up the stairs to Baker Street because Mrs. Hudson will  _kill him_  if she wakes up and there's nowhere else to go. 

John makes coffee while Sebastian prowls around the flat, a little too big for it, picking things up that have lain where they fell or the past six months, tossing them from hand to hand, reading the scraps of paper still pinned to the wall and, once in a while, standing quietly and just looking at something, or at John. Eventually he drops onto the couch, and begins flipping idly, nosily, through the papers Sherlock had been reading the day he died. John can tell when he gets to the Sun article because he snorts once and says, very softly, "Fuck you, boss."

By the time John comes into the living room gingerly carrying two cups of coffee in one hand and balancing the milk and sugar in the other, Sebastian is stretched full-length on the couch, dead to the world. In his sleep he looks no younger, no less brutal, only a little more vulnerable, a little more in pain. "Well," says John, and, "Alright then." He puts one cup down where Sebastian will see it, and drinks half of his in one long swallow, waiting to see, maybe, if the other man will wake. He doesn't.

John goes to bed, and falls asleep half-dressed.

Routine wakes John at quarter past ten. It's Saturday, and that means he lies there, quietly, for another fifteen minutes, letting the morning ease over him, waking up slowly to another day that does not contain Sherlock. Eventually the sincere need to brush his teeth drives him down the stairs, and by the time he's in the kitchen he's feeling slightly less like there is a chipmunk nest inside his brain. Last night's coffee tastes bloody awful warmed over, but then John makes terrible coffee to start with, and it doesn't bother him. He trails into the living room, sets the cup on the mantelpiece, and picks up Sherlock's violin. 

The tuning pegs are just starting to feel familiar to the tips of John's fingers. He can't play yet, not really, not more than a few notes, but he's learning. It doesn't really come naturally, but John doesn't mind. He draws the bow across the stings, very gently, and then nearly drops the violin when the couch says, "What the hell, Watson."

Sebastian is still there, lean and yawning and blinking sleep from his eyes. "It's not," he goes on, sitting up and making a face at the way his mouth tastes, "that I'm not flattered, but you're shit at serenades. Hint: half ten in the morning? Not a good time." He's on his feet, stretching, and then he's brushing past John into the kitchen, saying, "What d’you want for breakfast? I make a mean fuckin' omelet."

"Serenade," says John. "Omelet. What?"

It’s not like he’s moved in, thinks John, eight weeks later, it’s not. It’s just that he doesn’t leave. Or if he does he comes back. It seems like every time John drags himself up the stairs after a day at the clinic, Sebastian is already there, ignoring him, drinking a cup of tea--he makes bloody  _perfect_  tea, steeped for exactly the right amount of time, with just the right amount of sugar--and eating pasta off the good china, scarred and barefoot and totally at home. 

And every time John gets back to the flat it’s a little  _cleaner_ , a little more organized, and sometimes he catches Sebastian rearranging the spices by frequency of use or the books by which ones John reads the most, and Mrs. Hudson, paradoxically, loves him, and it’s all gone very strange, really. 

“Johnny-boy,” says Seb, hands full. “Move, you’re in the goddamn way.” John’s not sure when they started sitting down to dinner every night--they don’t sit and talk, really, but they sit down  _together,_  and Sebastian is, latest in a litany of inexplicable things, a very good cook, so that’s alright.

“It’s my kitchen.”

“Like fuck it’s your kitchen.” Sebastian thumps into John in passing, and John thinks he will never get used to this, the idle way the other man knocks shoulders with him, rough and affectionate and wordless. 

He isn’t Sherlock.

“It’s your turn for dishes.”

_“Fuck_  that.” 

It doesn’t matter.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and lyrics quoted are taken from Mumford and Son's song "Little Lion Men".


End file.
